


A Possession

by Hopetohell



Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Degradation, Masturbation, Mind Reading, POV Second Person, Past Torture, Possession, Praise Kink, Smut, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:48:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28021188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hopetohell/pseuds/Hopetohell
Summary: It’s like this. You tried sitting on your hand once til it was numb, so that when you closed your hand around yourself it would seem like it belonged to someone else.When he fell, August Walker found himself someplace unexpected. Henry has a few thoughts about this.
Relationships: August Walker/Henry Cavill
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	1. Your Body is a Temple (part 1: convergence)

**Author's Note:**

> The August Walker/Henry Cavill RPF possession story that no one asked for but is happening anyway. Most chapter titles pulled from whatever I was listening to at the time of writing.

_He doesn’t die, not quite. He finds something better._

It’s like this. You tried sitting on your hand once til it was numb, so that when you closed your hand around yourself it would seem like it belonged to someone else. 

_A face at the glass. The sensation of falling, of oil under your skin. Sharp pinpricks in every pore, a headache that threatened to split you in two. Stillness, for a moment. Then_

Wake up. 

Nobody there. 

_Wake up._

You push up on your elbows, look around. Everything looks the same as always. You’re alone, as always. Even Kal is asleep in the other room, and anyway if he’s started talking then you’ve got more problems than you thought. 

_Get up. Isn’t there a mirror?_

There is, on the wall above the dresser. You rake your hands through your hair, making your bedhead even more pronounced. It feels good, so you do it again, tugging a little on your curls. And again, scraping one hand down through your stubble, over your jaw and down your neck. Press just a little. 

_We look good._

What?

_Pay attention. I know you won’t want to miss this._

It’s like this. Your hand is your hand is not your hand. The calluses are the same, the thick fingers are the same, but there’s static fuzzing the signal somewhere between brain and hand. You surprise yourself with the way you scrape your fingers down your chest, with the way you dig those fingers into the skin of your belly, nails raising red welts. 

_Hm, you really like that, don’t you? Look at you._

And yeah, it’s a little surprising, watching the blood pulse into your cock like that, watching it twitch and jump, but it is morning and you were dreaming—

_Dreaming about what? Tell me. Give me your secrets. Was it something like_

Your hand closes around your cock, stroking dry once, twice, before pulling away and you whine, you _whine_ and want to touch again, it’s like your hand is your hand is not your hand and you grip the edge of the dresser, breathing just a little harder than you should. 

_like this?_

And you open your mouth, shove the first two fingers of your right hand inside. _Suck. Get them wet for me._ What? You’re not sure where this is coming from but oh there’s a line of fire running down from your fingers to your cock and it’s so so so

 _Good. That’s a good boy._

Oh _fuck._ Your left hand slips off the edge of the dresser. You catch yourself on your forearm and that’s going to be a bruise for sure. And now, bent over like this, it’s just so easy to reach back behind yourself with your right hand, feel your fingers stroking cool and wet down the cleft of your ass. Feel the muscle of your hole twitch, just a little. But it’s not—

_Not gonna work. Where do you keep the lube? Fucking tell me we have lube._

You do, and it’s right here, _regular fucking boy scout aren’t you,_ you squeeze it sloppy onto your fingers and kick your legs farther apart, getting into position like you’re presenting your ass for, for what? 

_For me. Now, get your fingers inside yourself. You know how I like it._

Yeah, just a little too fast, a little too hard. You breach your entrance with one fingertip and it’s like fire; your head jerks up like someone’s grabbed you by the hair and _there you are_ in the mirror, eyes just a little too bright, _eyes on me, that’s good, oh you good boy. Look at you._

One finger becomes two becomes three, slopping more lube onto your hand like it’s going out of style, and the stretch, the burn of is has you gasping voiceless, breath fogging the mirror as you try to lean forward and reach back at once, as your strange tv-static fingers search for the spot that makes your vision white out. 

_There. Just like that. Oh you’re so greedy, aren’t you. You’d take my whole fist if I wanted, you’d take it and you’d like it._

_Fuck,_ yes, god you can’t breathe, can’t think, because you’re hitting that spot with every press of your hand now; you could swear you feel fingers gripping at your hair, raking down your chest, closing around you and it’s impossible, impossible, it’s 

_Me. Come for me, now, that’s it. Don’t look away._

And oh, _fuck,_ that’s all it takes until you’re coming hard, so hard it drives you to your knees, right hand wrenching free and you think maybe you’re dying. Is this what dying feels like?

_Obviously not. Now get up. Get dressed. We have such a busy day ahead._


	2. Blinking Lights and Revelations

He makes you lick your own semen off the dresser. Well, he doesn’t _make_ you, exactly; you have the sense that he’s more a passenger than anything, but fuck if it doesn’t get you going anyway. He says _clean up after yourself_ in that weird way that’s like talking but not, like he’s right inside your brain ( _am I not? What do you think is happening here, boy?_ ) And that weird static feel is ghosting down your spine, nerves firing in a fingertip pattern. So you lick at the wood and fist your cock which is somehow, impossibly, hard again already. Until

_No._

“No?”

_Drop it. I will tell you when you can touch yourself._

There’s that static again, bursting down your spine to your arm your hand your fingers. Your hand drops open and you breathe hard, pained, every nerve firing at once. 

Maybe not just a passenger after all. There’s a rich warm sensation, curling under the skin behind your ear. _Try again, pet. See where it gets you._

“Who even are you? Why is this happening, I don’t understand.”

_You don’t have to understand. You just have to deal with it._

“But who—“

_You don’t know? Even though we fit so well? I think maybe you do know, and you’re scared._

He’s not wrong. 

_Of course I’m not._

You dress, let Kal out and back in. He looks at you skeptically before disappearing to wherever he goes when he’s not lounging at your feet. You get out egg whites and chicken breast for breakfast which somehow becomes bacon and eggs and those weird American biscuits that are like scones except not. _You_ certainly don’t know how to make them, and yet there they are being formed under your hands. You watch a little, feeling your mind disconnect from your body a bit. Static again. 

_Your body is a tool. You have to take care of it. And if you don’t, then I will. Now drink._

The water is halfway to your lips before you realize you can’t remember pouring it. The glass drops from your suddenly nerveless fingers. 

_Well, clean it up. And get another glass. Christ, we’re thirsty. What have you been doing to yourself?_

You eat your ridiculous breakfast and drink your water, and you hate it but he’s right. You do feel better. You could almost forget what has turned out to be the weirdest morning of your life so far. 

You flex your fingers, roll the stiffness out of your spine and 

_Oh, fuck. That feels good. Do it again._

What? You go through the motions in reverse, stretching your spine til it pops, shaking out your fingers, flexing them against the opposite palm until you feel _yeah_ the coil of pleasure in your gut. And _oh_ that drops a thought like ice into your veins. A little detail you thought up during one of those never-ending script rewrites, something you’d never shared and had in fact put out of your mind because it was so ridiculous. His hands hurt. They always hurt. 

Walker. 

This is ridiculous. It’s completely insane, completely impossible, and yet

_And yet here we are. Funny, so I exist here too?_

“You’re just a character. A figment. You aren’t real.” 

_Not real, huh? I saw how hard you came with our fingers in your ass._

And _oh_ how your cheeks burn at that. You can still feel echoes of that stretch, that soreness that lingers. 

“But if you’re here, then” 

_uh-uh._ You start to feel that static creeping down your spine—again?— _come on, there’s a good boy._

“Honestly? I don’t think I can.” 

_You can. You think I don’t feel it? That ache, that burn, that little bit too much? Think I can’t feel what makes you weak?_

“You’re deflecting.”

_And it’s working._

Fuck, he’s right. You hate that he seems to know you as much as you know him. You’re frantically scrabbling through your memories, trying to pull up your sense of Walker-the-character but it’s been two years. Still, you reach bits and pieces, his confidence, his almost aggressive masculinity, his betrayal. 

His—

_Bright, blinking lights. Shouting. Begging. Asking why—_

A burst of static drops you to your knees. It hurts him. This little bit of backstory you’d pulled out of your ass to try and keep Walker consistent in your mind when the script changed every damn day. It hurts him and you take it back, you take it back. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t, I didn’t know.”


	3. Hunger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve got a hunger and I can’t seem to get full.”  
> —Bright Eyes

You prod at him like a bruise, a wound, a scab you pull off before it’s healed so you can see, just for a moment, the raw wet flesh before blood comes rushing in, feel the flare of pain as the last of the scab lifts away. 

_Knock it off._

“Come on. Please. I didn’t know, how could I? I didn’t even think you were real. If I’d known, I wouldn’t— Shit. This isn’t coming out right. Look, if something like that happened to me I wouldn’t want someone digging it up either.”

_Something like that._

_Something like that? Something like_

Static bursting in your head again, loud and overwhelming, the signal lost and all you can do is writhe, all you can do is crawl as it takes you under. Because

_The lights are bright, so bright, and the blood roars in your ears as they tie your wrists down tight, as they pull off your nails one by one. As they break your hands lovingly, bone by bone by bone. As they leave you to lie on the floor, gasping through tears and snot, clutching your hands to your chest._

_And that was an easy day._

Jesus. The static fades, receding back up into your spine as you lie there gasping, trying to push down the memory because that’s what it was, wasn’t it. Not backstory, not theory, and _oh_ your hands ache with it. So you rub them, thumbs pressing between bones, until the feeling recedes, until you feel a little spreading warmth work its way up your arms. 

“I don’t know what to say.”

_Don’t._

“I—“

_Not happening. Now you know and that’s the end of it. Worry about it on your own time._ With anyone else, you’d bring them something to drink, sit close enough that they could lean into you if they wanted. Give them space while offering up your own. Even knowing what kind of man he is, what he’s done, he’s still hurting and you always were taught to help those in need. But here you are more intimately connected than you’ve ever been with anyone before, with Walker so deep inside you, and there’s nothing you can do for him. 

_Phrasing, boy._ Amusement, warm at the back of your neck. _Besides, if I was inside you, I doubt you’d have the space to think about it._ You feel that static again, radiating out from your spine. It curls around your hips, wraps around your inner thighs. It’s gentle, effervescent. And god help you, but you want more of it. 

“Deflecting again?”

_Obviously. Now shut up and let me take care of us._ It’s nearly soporific, the way he curls around your mind. You can feel him picking at the seams of your worries, brushing them away and leaving an emptiness behind. _Let me do this, I’ll make it good._

You’ve thought about it, haven’t you. Thought about the way Walker would fuck. You always do, when you’re feeling out a new character. After all, it’s the closest you can get to another person, the most honest and intimate you can possibly be with someone. 

Almost, anyway. 

Charles Brandon? Up for nearly anything, anywhere, with anyone. Likes to surprise his partners with a silk bow around his cock. Has a scar in his left armpit from a knifeplay experiment that nearly went very wrong. 

Clark Kent? Gives and gives and gives. Always holds himself back, likes it out in the cornfields where he can smell the warm earth. His first orgasm blew out every window in a three-mile radius. 

Napoleon Solo? Oh, you don’t really like to think about that one. Has tried just about everything and enjoyed almost none of it. Would really like to be tied down and petted until he falls asleep, but doesn’t know how to ask for it. 

And August Walker? 

_Come on. Tell me how I like it._

“You, oh Christ this is embarrassing.” 

_Mmm, is it? I can feel it, you know. You can’t hide from me, not really. Now be a good boy and tell me. I want to hear it from you._

“You—oh hell. You like to leave marks, alright? Cuts, bruises, it doesn’t matter. You just want them to look at themselves after and be reminded of you. You always make it good for them, it’s a point of pride I guess. But you never let go, so you’re never really satisfied.”

_Clever. Go on. How do I touch them? I want you to show me._


	4. Uses of the Flesh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “And who is to say what flesh should do, and who is to have it for that use?”  
> —Built to Spill

It’s like this. Your hand is your hand is our hand. _Show me._

“I— I don’t even know where to start.”

_Same as anything. You start at the beginning. Here, I’ll even make it easy for you._

There’s that creeping, bubbly feeling again but this time it’s crawling up the side of your neck. You follow it with your fingers and yes, good, definitely the right choice. Press your fingers to your lips, try again, move your hand to your hair and tug. _There you go. Show me your throat._ You can picture him, can’t you, drawing your head back with a grip just the wrong side of too hard. Can feel him nosing at the point of your jaw, biting over your Adam’s apple. 

“How in the fuck?” 

_Your nerves are my nerves. Keep touching. Mmm, yeah, like that. That’s your carotid artery, can you feel the blood pumping? Not too much now, follow the blood down._

And yeah, yeah you can feel your artery pulsing as you press into it with your index finger, hold it long enough to feel that thrumming in your skull, but 

_Not today._

Fuck but it’s good, it’s so good, hold it long enough and you could drop to the carpet, starve your brain of blood a little and you could 

_Don’t._

That static again, sharper this time. Driving your hand down, unbuttoning your shirt with one clumsy hand. It’s like you’ve never undressed yourself before. And it hurts, somehow, little prickles of pain at your fingertips with every button. But that creeping static is curling under your shirt as you work, running blunt little tendrils down your chest and circling your nipples until they pebble hard, until your hips make the tiniest movement, seeking any kind of friction you can get, until you open your pants and get yourself out in the open air. Until 

“What the fuck?”

You can feel a hand on your cock, sure and strong, but it can’t be yours because by this point you’ve got one hand playing with your tits and the other wrenching your head back by the hair. And you try to speak but the angle of your throat crushes the words, rasps them out weak and strangled. 

“Oh, that’s good.” Your voice is doubled, echoing on itself, flat American accent chasing your own. His words are hot in your throat and you can’t tell if it’s actually good or not; it’s like being in a hall of mirrors and not knowing which way is out and which way will break your nose against the glass. He’s like fire in your throat, under your skin, everywhere. 

_Fuck,_ you’ve got that tightening coil in your gut and this might be it, might be the first time you’ve ever come untouched

_Untouched? Really? I’m insulted._

And then you feel it. That hot white spark inside, the one you’ve only sometimes managed to hit with fingers and a careful angle, the spark that makes your balls draw up tight and your cock pulse even as something just barely holds you back from the edge. Whatever it is, it’s 

“Christ. I— what is that? How are you—?” You’re wound tight, so tight. All it would take is the smallest push; you’re so hard you’re sweating and your nails are tearing at your chest, at your scalp, everywhere except where you most need your hands to be. And when you feel the first tears start to prick at your eyes, you hear him. 

_Hey._ He sounds— stretched, somehow. _You ever come so hard you see God?_ And with a flare of fire deep inside, you do. You come harder than you ever have in your life, and it’s the last thing you know for a long, long while.


	5. You and Me (part 2: Separation)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Let’s talk about spaceships, or anything except you and me. Ok?”  
> —Say Hi

“What is this?”

You are nowhere at all. Everything is white and featureless, stretching off into infinity. 

_This, er, wasn’t supposed to happen. Not exactly._

“Ok. Ok. Just, what happened? The last thing I remember is—“ it’s still too embarrassing to say. But you’re thinking about it, and he knows. You can see it in his face. His. 

Wait. 

What?

“You, uh, I can see you.” Oh that’s really smooth. It’s strange, more than you’d expect even given that your asshole doppelgänger who, until now has possessed you and even fucked you from the inside out, is currently standing in front of you. He’s just watching, with an expression you can’t quite parse. And you realize with a shock, he’s not quite what you pictured, is he? 

Sure, you could be identical twins. Same eyes, same bone structure, same stubborn curls. But he has marks you don’t remember giving him, either in the makeup chair or your imagination. His face is scarred but it looks faded. Revised, like he’s spent time under the knife. There’s a thick, knotted scar crawling up from under his collar. And his hands, Christ his hands. 

_What, you didn’t know? After all that?_

“That wasn’t the only time, was it?” It’s, fuck. It’s too much. One memory of one day was enough to take you to pieces, and you only got it secondhand. To live it? More than once? God, no wonder he’s so fucked up. 

_Such an asshole, you mean. I can still hear you, you know._

He tucks his hands in his pockets, looms somehow taller. _Doesn’t matter. Now knock it off, I am trying to figure out what to do._

He paces, gaze fixed on some point in the distance. There’s someone there, stomping along in too-big robes, dragging some sort of sickle (scythe? You were never clear on the difference) like it’s personally offended them. When they’re within complaining distance you hear a stream of muttered curses. **Can’t fucking believe it. Idiot doesn’t stay dead anywhere, does he? And who do they send to sort this shit out? Me. Unbelievable.**

He’s on you without warning. His hands fist in your hair, face close enough that you catch the nearly imperceptible twitch when he closes his fingers. _Listen to me. Listen to me. If she takes me I will die. Do you want that on your conscience?_

Life would definitely be simpler without him. You could go back to the way things were, when August Walker was just a character you’d played once. But he knows what you’re thinking, and the hurt is clear on his face. And you just, you can’t. Even for a murderer, even for an asshole like him, you can’t condemn him to death. And so when the strange reaper stops and raises her scythe (or sickle, whatever), you step between them and almost apologetically say, “Please. Don’t.”

She lowers the scythe and gives you a look. Sighs a sepulchral little sigh. **He can’t stay in you. You both don’t fit.**

She sees your face, then, the kicked-puppy expression that is so much more effective for the way it contrasts with your bulk. She sighs again, wearily, as though she’s making a choice between a root canal or an extraction. 

**Oh they do not pay me enough for this. Fine. Look. I can pull a few strings, maybe get you into separate bodies at least. But he’s dead, technically, so he’s feeding off your life. If he gets too far away, that’ll be it for him. Now get out of here before I change my mind.**

The nothingness you’re standing on becomes the nothingness you fall through, so fast you can’t catch a breath. You see cliffs, maybe. Birds that gyre in strange patterns. Everything hurts, all at once, like your insides are attached to a parachute and someone’s just pulled the ripcord. You fall, and cry, and hear her voice. **Don’t say I never did anything for you. But don’t complain to me if you don’t like how this turns out.**

You wake, somehow, on your living room carpet, face pressed into its faded roses. Everything hurts and there’s a whisper at the back of your mind that says danger. danger. someone is here. Scarred bare feet cross your vision. He crouches, forearms braced across his thighs, and smirks. _Hey. Welcome back. Did you miss me?_


	6. Ten Foot Pole

Ten feet. Ten feet is exactly how far apart you can get before he drops to the ground, writhing and howling (well, to any reasonable person it’s a shade over three meters, but when you told him that he’d given you the finger from where he lay panting on the carpet). So you’re careful to stay within ten feet, but you’re also careful not to touch him. It’s just too damn weird. 

Ten feet. Far enough to eat at opposite ends of the table. Far enough for one of you to shower while the other sits on the closed toilet lid and plays angry birds (you) or furiously googles “how to break curse. Body snatching techniques. Reverse body snatching. How to undo exorcism. Alcoholic Baja freeze recipe. Mail order tequila. Nearest liquor store.”

Bedtime is going to be an issue. There is simply no way to get him into a guest bed, or one of you on the couch, without putting him too far away. And neither one of you is about to sleep on the floor, so sharing it is. And you’d offered him some clothes to sleep in, you really did, but he’d just let the towel drop and climbed into bed while you tried _so_ hard not to goggle at him. 

It’s just, it’s extremely weird seeing your own face and body on someone else. There are differences, though. Most obviously, the scars. But aside from that, there’s a peculiar hardness to him you doubt could be mimicked just by time at the gym. Every twitch, every flex of muscle seems purposeful. Calculated. And you really, really shouldn’t be thinking about what he’d feel like. About how he’s big enough, strong enough, _you_ enough to take you to pieces. How he’s already been inside you, how he hijacked your nerves to light you up from the inside out. 

Fuck, this is mortifying. He’s right there in the bed, so close, so naked, and here you are fantasizing about him, aren’t you? After everything that’s happened, hell, probably _because_ of everything that’s happened, you’re here in bed nursing a semi and praying he doesn’t notice. 

Of course he notices. Why wouldn’t he? He notices, and he tucks a hand behind his head, shifts the blanket down just short of indecency. The asshole is showing off, and the worst part is it’s working on you. If he reaches for you, fuck, you know you’d let him do anything he wanted. Even if it doesn’t make sense. Even if it’s bad, and wrong, and the bastard _possessed_ you. 

“Even good boys deserve to take what they want sometimes.” He’s watching in the semidark, smirking a little like he hears your thoughts. “I wouldn’t mind.” He turns his face toward the ceiling, scratches lightly through the hair on his belly. You turn from him with a huff, fisting your hands in the sheets, so hard now that it hurts. You won’t, you _can’t._

He _hmms_ in the bed beside you, resonant and low. Fuck. You’re going to, aren’t you.


	7. Shake, Shake

Somehow, impossibly, you make it more than a week without touching him. And somehow, you figure out a way to exist in the same space. Thank god for quarantine, at least, so you have an excuse to stay at home, to keep this weirdness out of the public eye. 

Walker turns out to be a surprisingly competent cook, but hesitates when you ask what his favorite foods are. And despite everything, it’s so hard to shake the feeling of being a host, of providing for your guest, however uninvited he might be. So you make a grocery order and start in on the best dishes you know, pies and roast lamb, hamburgers, risotto, whatever comes to mind when you think of meals you’ve enjoyed. He eats them all dutifully, but it’s not until you hit upon rainbow trout in parchment that you get your first real sigh of pleasure. _Huh._ You would’ve pegged him for a red meat kind of guy. 

And everything you do, everywhere you go, he’s there, watching. Considering. Ten feet away. 

It’s like this. One evening he braces one hand against the wall of the shower and drops his head in a pose you know so well. You don’t mean to look, but Christ he must want you to. Must, because he draws open the shower door to stare straight at you from under his sopping curls as he fists his cock. Must, because he kicks his legs apart to press hard behind his balls with his other hand. Must, because he hisses your name like a curse when he paints the bathroom floor white. And the whole time his eyes are locked on yours. 

“I wouldn’t mind,” he says again, and somehow you find the voice to answer. 

“Wouldn’t mind isn’t good enough. You’ve got to tell me you want it.” And you have the satisfaction of seeing August Walker poleaxed, however briefly. He _hmms_ a little, thoughtfully, and brushes past you into the bedroom, water droplets shining on the curve of his ass. His gait hitches as he approaches the limits of separation, and you hurry to follow, clean enough to get by for another night but feeling filthier than you have any right to. And when you slide carefully under the covers, he inhales deeply, like he’s scenting you. He smiles, victorious, in the half-dark as you lie there with both hands fisted in the sheets just like you have for days, but now you know exactly what he looks like when he comes. 

Fuck. 

He escalates, because of course he does. He waits until you’re soaking up sunshine in the kitchen window, then presses in close to cage your body against the counter. He brushes scarred fingertips down the side of your face, and it’s like your mind has been ripped straight out of your body. You feel him touching you, and fuck. You _feel him touching you._ It’s the strangest sensation, touches doubling and echoing. Licking into his mouth and tasting your own tongue, pulling him in by the hips and feeling matching bruises rise on your own body. And from the way he surges against you, he must feel it too. 

_Remember. Your nerves are my nerves. You want me to say it? Here it is, directly from my mind to yours. I. Want. This._

This is the part of the movie where it fades to black, where the last thing the audience sees is the lovers, entwined, maybe a flash of light on a naked thigh. This is the part where the music swells, climaxes, spills into silence. 

This is the part where the next scene is either a soft, affectionate embrace or a hasty exit from the bed, a quick redressing and an angsty downtempo tune, maybe a walk in the rain. 

This is the part where he starts to rise, where you wrap your hand around his wrist and whisper, “stay.”


	8. Untethering (part 3: Dissolution)

It isn’t clear, at first, what’s happening. A little extra hair in the drain is easy to explain away; you’ve got two people sharing the shower now. Same with the bruising that appears on his arms, his back, his ribs, because for all he grips at you, you give back in equal measure. And if he takes a little longer in the shower than before, if he seems to spend an awfully long time just leaning back and letting the spray hit him, well, maybe he’s finally relaxing a little. 

It’s days and days of rutting against one another, of watching in the mirror as he takes you apart. And he loves it, that grinding ache in his fingers as he presses them inside you. He loves it, and you know because you feel it, feel an answering ache in your own hands and a twinge in your cock that’s almost but not quite unlike anything you’ve felt before (it’s close, so close, to the first time, when he was still just a voice in your head). 

Somehow, it’s still a surprise when he shakes you awake and hisses, “Get inside me. Now.” And when you reach for him, a little hesitant because you’ve had each other in nearly every way except this, you taste something strange and metallic, chilly on your tongue. He’s anxious, desperate. The metallic taste increases in its intensity as he surges at your mouth, licking into you with savage competency. 

“Are you—“ are you sure is what you want to say, but he’s pressing lube at you with one hand while trying to tear your sleep pants off with the other, and it feels like he’s got half a dozen hands roaming all around you, and it’s unfair because he knows exactly what this does to you, exactly how you respond to every touch. It’s overwhelming, and soon you lose that peculiar metallic taste in the static that sparks hot down your spine and right into where you swell and pulse with the sudden desperate need of him. 

And you want to watch his face, watch those eyes shine in the darkness, want to rub your face against his as you open him but he’s turning away, over, hitching a knee under himself and reaching blindly back for your hand. “Now,” he grits out in a voice like the bottom of a dry well. And it’s too soon, has to be, before he’s demanding two and then three fingers and then “godfuckingdammit, that’s enough. Get _in_ me already.” 

And when you press into him it’s, _fuck,_ for a moment your vision whites out and you are nowhere, hurling aimlessly through a great expense of nothing, and it’s simultaneously the most terrifying and exhilarating thing you’ve ever felt. Is it like this for him? Can’t be, he’s always so controlled, so precise. It’s impossible even to think like this, 

_I’ll think for you. Don’t worry, just act._

so you don’t think, and when you return to your body it’s to find yourself draped over him, clinging, rolling your hips like a ship in a storm. Desperation doubles back and builds on itself until you feel as though if you don’t come right now you will die. And you don’t want to die, but you also aren’t sure what the rules are, so you try to withdraw and that’s when his hand closes around your wrist, hard and tight and “don’t you fucking dare.”

And that’s it, that’s all it takes, his touch and his blessing, before you’re spilling inside him in long shivering pulses. And even then, even when he clenches so tight around you like he’s pulling all the blood from your body, he doesn’t let you go. 

You stay with him, in him, until you soften and slip free, and when you wrap an arm over his belly he lets you. He feels warm, as relaxed as he ever gets, and most of all relieved. “Better?” you ask, and in return he twists his neck, rolling his shoulders back till he can reach to kiss you. It’s soft, but almost mathematical in its precision. And he still tastes like metal.


	9. Waves and Light (How Bold I Was)

He’s stopped sleeping. In the night you reach for him and find the bed cold. He’s there, of course, ten feet away, staring out the window. He’s all hard muscle, luminous in the moonlight, a demigod or an avenging angel. He turns and tilts his head, and you can see his breath hang frosty in the air. You wake in the morning to find him still standing at the window, and for a split second you could swear the light passes right through him. 

He’s stopped sleeping, and he hovers a little closer than he used to but he doesn’t touch, not until you sigh and tell him to “get over here. C’mon. I don’t have to touch you to know you’re worried about something.” 

So you enclose him in the circle of your arms, bump your face against his scars to feel that little spark, that staticky sensation from nerve damage, to feed him the pleasure that touching him brings. You breathe softly, saying nothing, until he relaxes by degrees. 

He smells like blood, but then again he always does. Chaos and death are embedded into every fiber of his being. If he were to shed his skin, to slither pink and naked into the world as a man reborn, maybe it would be different. But he is who he is, and you are who you are, although tangled like this it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference. One of you sparks a slow-burning arousal, the kind that takes hours to come to a head if it does at all, a slow soft yearning. You sigh into it, nuzzling at him a bit, feeling your stubble scrape across his cheek. Like this, you can almost forget who and what he is. 

And he hears you, huffs a little. _What I am doesn’t matter anymore, not outside these walls. And I—_

He sucks in a breath, harsh and wet, sucking air up from your lungs. It burns, scraping bloody up your throat. 

Metal again. And pressed against him like this, you can catch the echoes of fear, of a strange sort of dissolution. _Light through greasepaper, snow drifting through broken windows. Shoulders straining against his jacket. Blood and bone and a lonely valley. Trying to breathe but the shards of his ribs dig into his lungs—_

Oh. 

Oh _fuck_. You realize, then, that he’s dying, pulled back to that moment. None of this mattered in the end; all it did was delay the inexorable march of fate. You can almost see it happening, scars brightening and blooming into wounds, bruises rising where he hit the ground. And you hear it too, the slow scrape of metal across the floor, the heavy tread of boots and a soft susurration of fabric. She’s here. 

And it’s strange: you’d expect her to revel in this, finally capturing this soul that’s eluded her for so long. But it’s almost like she’s trying to be comforting. **Things fall apart. Entropy comes for us all, in the end. And you got more time than most.**

_Listen, I don’t want to_ **you have to go.** His fingers tremble against yours, coppery fear blooming heavy on your tongue. 

****I’m not unkind, you know. It’s just the way it has to be. Think of this as a gift. Better than falling apart piece by piece, isn’t that right?** **

****

Is it? Maybe, with more time, you could figure something out, maybe if he took just a little more, a few of your years, you don’t need that much time, you could spare him that— 

****

_No. Hey. We. We had a good run, didn’t we? Just, remember me. Please._

****

He’s terrified, pulse rabbiting in his chest, fingers clutching yours as the scythe descends. And you feel it when the connection breaks, tension dissolving as he fades, the cruel hard core of him pulling free from your chest. Your hand is your hand again, grasping at nothing. He manages a smile, almost, shimmering through a film of tears. _Hey, listen. I—_

****

And then he’s gone, nothing more than motes of dust in the air, as you blink hard, trying to pull him back into your sight. 

****


	10. The Last Thing Inside the Box Was

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue.

You see him sometimes, a flash of cold eyes in the crowd or a particular way someone has of standing. You listen to the wind, and watch frost crawling up the windows in winter, and you miss him. 

You return to the world, you smile and wave and show your teeth. It’s not a real smile, not quite, but you’ll get there. You always have. 

You bake trout in parchment, and American biscuits, and you eat alone. 

On a wintery afternoon you climb aboard a packed train, mercifully anonymous in the crowd. Your bare hand brushes against a stranger’s. You feel a spark, pins and needles, like a waking limb.


End file.
